This invention relates in general to quieting devices and, more particularly, to automatically quieting alerts on devices in close proximity to one another.
Pagers and cellular telephones are ever-present throughout our culture. Business meetings, theaters and other gathering places are often filled with these devices. Each of these devices has an alerting mechanism for alerting the user to incoming messages or calls. Often the alerting mechanisms on these devices interrupt meetings by loudly announcing the incoming messages or calls.
In order to avert this sort of disruption, many pager and cellular telephone manufacturers have provided these devices with optional low or off volume settings. These devices also often have a vibration alert setting that is a virtually inaudible way of alerting the user of incoming messages or devices.
Although these alternative alerting modes are helpful, users often forget to change the alert mode before entering into a situation where a loud alert is disruptive, such as a meeting or a theater. It would be desirable for these devices to recognize that a significant number of similar devices are present and automatically change modes to a less disruptive mode of alerting the user of incoming messages or calls.
According to principles of the present invention, an object alerting device discovers nearby alerting devices, compares the nearby alerting devices to a condition, and sets the object alerting device to a quiet mode when the condition is met by the nearby alerting devices.
According to further principles of the present invention, the nearby alerting devices may be discovered by receiving identification information from the nearby alerting devices and analyzing the identification information to discover the nearby alerting devices. Additionally, the object alerting device may first broadcast a request for identification to the nearby alerting devices.
According to further principles of the present invention, the object alerting device discovers the nearby alerting devices within a range, such as the communication range of the object alerting device, a portion of the communication range of the object alerting device, or a fixed distance about the object alerting device. The condition may be a number of nearby alerting devices within a distance from the object alerting device.
According to further principles of the present invention, the object alerting device may set be set to a quiet mode by either reducing the alerting volume, enabling a vibration alert mode, or both reducing the alerting volume and enabling a vibration alert mode.